DOI: 10.7763/IPEDR. 2012. V57.

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The Influence Factors of Online Purchase on Customer Satisfaction in

Mongolian Airlines

Baasandulam Byambaa* and Kuo-Chung Chang1

Graduate Institute of International Business, National Dong-Hwa University, Taiwan

Abstract. The daily growth of the internet and electronic ticketing has become an integral part of airline
companies’ strategy for increased profits through better customer service. The electronic ticketing (E-
ticketing) is experiencing growth in Mongolia. This study is defining Mongolian customer’s satisfaction with
online purchasing experience using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Customer satisfaction factors
included ease of use, website design, payment security, interactivity and information quality of the website.
The objective of this study is to examine the extent to which these five factors effect passenger’s satisfaction
with Airlines in Mongolia. The survey based on 3 airlines: MIAT Mongolian airline, AeroMongolia, Eznis
Airways and data collected from 138 passengers of those airlines. The results show that, there are three
significant factors, interactivity, payment security and ease of use, affect satisfaction with the e-ticketing
experience on customer satisfaction in Mongolia.
Keywords: Ease of Use, Information Quality, Website Design, Payment Security, Interactivity, Customer
Satisfaction

1. Research Background
Airline electronic commerce market is one of the fast growing industries in the world. Airline industry’s
ticket distribution channel is changed to e-ticketing. This distribution channel gives customers to purchase e-
ticket rapidly and it has a cost saving for both company and customers (Chen, 2007). Even virtual
distributors on the Internet might be insecurity and trustworthy, but still one of the most important channel
for airlines to sell tickets (Motlaq S.V., 2012). Mongolia is a landlocked country with territory of 1 564 166
sq.km with potential high demand in air transportation within 2, 7 million populations. According to the
Statistic-2010 of Population and Housing Census there are around 709,600 internet users in Mongolia,
implying a penetration rate of 30.6 percent. Many empirical studies examined e-commerce customer
satisfaction in various countries. However empirical research with customer e-satisfaction going so far in the
e-commerce, but it is starting to develop from 2010 in Mongolia actively. According to the 2010 statistics by
Mongolian Civil Aviation Authority (MCAA), airline passengers increased by 24, 7 percent, compared with
previous years. An important model for describing the customer satisfaction in e-commerce is Technology
Acceptance Model (TAM). This study used TAM model and it can be explained by two salient beliefs:
perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. This study examines customer satisfaction of online
purchasing ticket with regard to ease of use, information quality, website design, payment security and
interactivity that have an effect on passenger’s satisfaction levels of Airlines in Mongolia. The purpose of
research is to identify what influence factors impact on customer satisfaction level in airline industry and
what are the main factors that affect the Mongolian passenger’s intention to purchase e-tickets through e-
satisfaction? This study proposes hypothesis testing in trying to find answers to research questions and also
identifies the demographic characteristics of customer and it might be influence consumer decisions to
purchase e-ticket and e-satisfaction.

2. Literature review
2.1. Electron Ticket (E-Ticket)
An e-ticketing is a paperless electronic document, particularly in the airlines industry (Kurniawan, 2010).
Nowadays all major airlines use e-ticketing method for selling ticket. When a customer buy or books airline

* Corresponding author. Tel,: +886-988 131 542; fax: +866-3-8633040.

Email address: dumaa_baaska@yahoo.com (Baasandulam, B).
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ticket by telephone or internet, the detail of reservation are stored in computer. The benefit of e-ticketing is
reduces expense of purchasing airline ticket by eliminating the need printing and mailing paper documents
(Chen, 2007). Another advantage is that consumers can compare ticket costs easily online without
transaction fee. In Mongolia, the airline reservation system started since November in 2007, according to the
Statistic-2010 of MCAA.

2.2. Customer Satisfaction

The customer satisfaction may be a basic standard of service performance and a possible standard of
faultlessness for any business organization (Gerson, 1993). Satisfaction is a response to a perceived
discrepancy between prior expectations and perceived performance after consumption (Eid, 2011; Lau T.C,
2011; Merwe V.D, 2010). Customer satisfaction is defined by how satisfied with product/services. Thus
satisfaction is extremely important to marketers of product and services because a satisfied customer has a
positive purchase intention such as a repurchase, positive word-of–mouth and loyalty in the long term. For
example: (Rosen, 2001) found that 35 to 40% of e-commerce website sales revenue comes from repeat
visitors. Thus, customer satisfaction leads to customer loyalty and it has positive growth in market share and
predict further market penetration of Airline Company (Yeoh & Chan, 2011).

2.3. Research Framework

According to models and studies of e-ticket satisfaction, several factors have been proposed to affect to
online satisfaction (Eid, 2011; Lau T.C, 2011; Merwe V.D, 2010; Motlaq S.V., 2012; Szymanski & Hise,
2000). The five factors in this study have been explored including: the information quality, website quality,
payment security, interactivity and ease of use (Figure 1).
Ease of use

Information quality
Customer’s
Website design
satisfaction level
Payment security

Interactivity

Figure 1: Research framework

2.4. Technology Acceptance Model

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is one of the most widely used models for explaining end
user behavior (Davis, 1989). This study used one variable of TAM which is ease of use; Davis suggested that
ease of use has positive effect on perceived usefulness. The TAM improves a useful model for the prediction
of customers’ acceptance of airline online purchasing (Motlaq S.V., 2012). A good ease of use could lead to
higher levels of satisfaction. Yoo and Donthu (2001) indicated of a website quality is how easy the site is to
use and usability. Therefore, customer’s usability is very important to customer’s satisfy on online, this
hypothesis is postulating that:
H1: The ease of use has a positive effect on customer satisfaction toward e-ticket purchase.

2.5. Information Quality

The information quality is becoming more important concept of livelihood organizations today. Merwe
V.D (2010) divided Information system quality into systems quality and information quality. System quality
refers to software development and information quality embraces accuracy, completeness, conciseness,
relevance, understandability, meaningfulness, comparability and reliability of information (DeLone &
McLean, 1992). Francis and White (2002) found that adequate information of product description can
increase a customer’s intention to purchase. When the information provided that the website is reliable and
accurate, this will support online customer satisfaction enhance. Thus, it can be hypothesized that:
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 H2: The information quality of website has a positive effect on customer satisfaction toward e-ticket
purchase.

2.6. Website Design

Manes (1997), reports that good website design represent a good organization. This means offering
customers uncluttered screens, fast presentations, interface design, simple search paths, and interactivity
tools available. Moreover, each of these elements of site design could impact e-satisfaction levels. Attractive
web pages present to customer animated gifts, sound, video and entertainment contents like advertisement
but some consumers don’t like to web banners, because they slow down a web page (Szymanski & Hise,
2000). A website’s navigation scheme is one of the most important elements of effective website design
(Summers & Summers, 2005). So customers are likely to return to a website often that they perceive a well-
designed navigation scheme. Thus, it can be hypothesized that:
H3: The website design has a positive effect on customer satisfaction toward e-ticket purchase.

2.7. Payment Security

Security is basically an important factor when customer consider about online purchase. The majority of
B2C trades are paid by credit card about 60% and next most popular payment method is Electronic Funds
Transfer about 30% (Turban, King, Lang, & Lai, 2011). All of payment method request payment security
and it also identify website security and quality. Bruskin/Goldberg Research, reports that when customer
decide to buy goods online, 75% of Internet shopper emphasize credit-card security (Szymanski & Hise,
2000). A high level of website security can lead to customer satisfying intentions. Thus, it can be
hypothesized that:
H4: The payment security has a positive effect on customer satisfaction toward e-ticket purchase.

2.8. Interactivity
This study is included interactivity factor which means effective handling of problems and returns to
customer through the site (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Malhotra, 2005). The interactivity is a dialogue
between the customer and the website by email and chat programs and some scholar reported that the
interactivity is related to how questions of customers are answered and it is save the customer time and
increases electronic service quality (Merwe V.D, 2010). Robbins and Stylianou (2003) found that responsive
website support to customers expect respond to their questions promptly. Therefore interactivity is one of the
influence factors on customer satisfaction via the internet.
H5: The interactivity has a positive effect on customer satisfaction toward e-ticket purchase.

3. Methodology and Results

3.1. Measurement
This research measured by five variables which have an effect on passenger’s satisfaction levels of
Airlines in Mongolia. The dependent variable in this study is customer satisfaction and the independent
variables are ease of use, website design, information quality, interactivity and payment security. Our
questionnaire is designed by previous scholars Merwe V.D (2010), Forgas, Palau, Sánchez, and Huertas-
García (2012) and Eid (2011). Questionnaire has two parts, first part is designed by Likert Scale questions
which is every question consists of the items be based on the research variables and each item measurement
in 5-point Likert Scale, ranging from 5 for “very satisfied” to 1 for “very dissatisfied,” is used to measure
responses to questions and second part is designed by demographic questions.

3.2. Data Collection

Before develop a formal questionnaire a pilot test was conducted. Subjects for the pilot test were among
airline employees and customers who were known to have made use of an airline’s website, which included
MIAT, Aeromongolia and Eznis Airways, to book their ticket. The pilot questionnaire contained 44
questions which were reduced to 24 for the final survey. There were 22 invalid responses from 160 total
completed responses. One hundred thirty-eight valid questionnaires were used to test are valid to test our
hypotheses.
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 Table 1: Descriptive Statistics of Respondent Profiles Table 3: Results of multiple regression analysis

Measure Item Frequency Percentage Model Std. Coefficient t-value Sig.

Age Less than 21 12 8.7%
21-35 111 80.4% Constant - -7.888 .000
36-50 12 8.7% Interactivity (I) .564 14.195 .000
51 and over 3 2.2% Payment security (PS) .373 7.431 .000
Gender Male 52 37.7% Ease of use (EOU) .277 4.816 .000
Female 86 62.3% Website design(WD) -.111 -2.062 .041
Current Managerial level 32 23.2% Information quality (IQ) .029 .382 .703
status Non-managerial level 37 26.8%
Dependent variable: Customer satisfaction (SF); p< .001; R2
Student 65 47.1% = .832
Unemployed 4 2.9%
Table 4: Result of Research Hypotheses
Table 2: Correlation matrix of variables

IQ WD PS I PEOU SF
Hypotheses Result
IQ 1
H1 The ease of use has a positive effect on Supported
WD .724** 1
customer satisfaction toward e-ticket purchase.
PS .658** .371** 1 H2 The information quality of website has a Not Supported
positive effect on customer satisfaction toward e-
I .380** .363** .360** 1
ticket purchase.
EOU .775** .558** .593** .280** 1 H3 The website design has a positive effect on Not Supported
customer satisfaction toward e-ticket purchase.
SF .622** .408** .718** .746** .616** 1
H4 The payment security has a positive effect on Supported
**Correlation is significant at the 0.001 level customer satisfaction toward e-ticket purchase.
Information quality–IQ, Website design–WD, Payment security–PS, H5 The interactivity has a positive effect on Supported
Interactivity–I, Ease of use–EOU, Customer satisfaction–SF customer satisfaction toward e-ticket purchase.

3.3. Data Analysis

Demographic characteristics including age, gender, current status and income level. Statistics of the
respondents shows that most of the respondents are students (47.1%) and non-managerial employees (26.8%).
The majority of the respondent’s ages between 21-35 years old (80.4%) because most of the respondents are
students and purchase e-ticketing for study. Some demographic characteristics of respondents are shown in
Table1.
The research model hypotheses were tested using ANOVA and multiple regression equations provided
by SPSS computer program. The Table 2 shows that the correlation of the relationships between the study
variables which are all 5 independent variables positive influence on customer satisfaction. The results of
the regression analysis are summarized in Table 3; show that Interactivity (t=14.195, p<0.001), PS (t=7.431,
p<0.001) and EOU (t=4.816, p<0.001) are found to significantly impact on SF positively supporting H1, H4
and H5. However, the variables WD and IQ are found not influential in SF even WD p=.041, t variable equal
to -2.062 and IQ p=.703, t=.382. Thus H2 and H3 are not supported because R2=.832, which means most of
the 83.2% of the variance in SF is explained by PS, Interactivity and EOU variables and Interactivity
variable have the strongest affect on SF ( .564), followed by direct affect of PS on SF ( .373) and
PEOU on SF ( .277) three variables have significant at the p<0.001.
4. Discussion and Conclusion
This study attempted to examine the determinants of e-commerce customer satisfaction in Mongolia. The
result of the research was supported three factors (PS, Interactivity and EOU) and rejected two factors (WD
and IQ), hypotheses is shown in Table4. In Mongolian customers, ease of use, interactivity and payment
security of e-commerce services are important determinants of e-commerce customer satisfaction in B2C
market. These results are in line with Lau T.C (2011) and Merwe V.D (2010) who found the ease of use,
payment security and interactivity of e-commerce services significantly affects on customer satisfaction
directly. However, this study found that the website design and information quality haven’t impact on e-
satisfaction, which disapproves with Eid (2011) and Lau T.C (2011) who argued that website design and
information quality of e-commerce is an antecedent of an online customer satisfaction. More recently,
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Ranjbarian, Fathi, and Rezaei (2012) indicated that the website design has no significant influence on e-
satisfaction in Iran which is agree with this study.
Mongolian airline’s customers focus more on interactivity and security of e-ticket purchases due to a
lack of experience in using airline e-ticketing and being more comfortable with face-to-face interaction with
airline personnel and the more traditional payment system. It is also one of the reasons for internet usage and
e-ticketing is not common in Mongolia. Finally, this study evaluated that website payment security,
interactivity and website’s ease of use to ensure high level of customer satisfaction toward e-ticket in
Mongolia.

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